Future of Education Interview Series

Future of Education

• November 11th, Wednesday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): Richard Halverson and Allan Collins on Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology.
• November 12th, Thursday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): Larry Cuban on on School Reform and Classroom Practice.
• November 19th, Thursday (5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern) "Howard's Brainstorms!" with Howard Rheingold (at Conversations.net).
• December 1st, Tuesday (1:00pm Pacific / 4:00pm Eastern): Dan Willingham on Why Students Don't Like School
• December 2nd, Wednesday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): Bob Compton on 2 Million Minutes.
• December 3rd, Thursday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): Curtis Bonk on The World Is Open.
• December 8th, Tuesday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): Angela Maiers on Classroom Habitudes
• December 9th, Wednesday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): Cheri Toledo Reports on Her Web 2.0 in Education Survey
• January 14th, Thursday (5pm Pacific, 8pm Eastern, 12am GMT): "Howard's Brainstorms!" with Howard Rheingold (at Conversations.net).
• February 3rd, Wednesday (5:00pm Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern): James Paul Gee

Autobiography Workshop at Lewiston Middle School

Agenda

ePals Webinars for Maine

Maine Connects at ePals



Come to a one-hour free webinar to learn how to join the ePals Global Community and find partners for your classroom or students. Also, learn how to sign up your students to use free, safe and protected ePals SchoolMail, featuring TRUSTe certification of child privacy.

Join the largest global community of K12 learners, with 600,000 classrooms in 200 countries, in true global collaboration and learning! Also learn about the newest web 2.0 projects in ePals, Team Earth (conservation and climate change) and Digital Storytelling.

All Maine schools share a subdomain: @maine.epals.com. This makes it easy for your students to collaborate with other students in Maine on state-specific activities.

Webinar times:

• 10-11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 13
• 4-5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 23
• 4:15-5:15 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 2
• 3:15-4:15 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 9

If you are interested in one of these webinars, please email Rita Oates, VP of education markets, at roates@corp.epals.com. She will provide the URL, password and toll-free number to anyone who is interested.

Digital Storytelling Workshop at Crescent Park School

Agenda

Visual Vocabulary

Three interesting sites to see word connections:

Visuwords

ThinkMap Visual Thesaurus

Wordsift

More Resources for Developing Vocabulary at LIM Resources

Making Decisions

by Ed Latham

Some nine years ago, I started questioning the way we adults make decisions as a society. I have been looking at ad campaigns, listening to radio, looking over Internet sales pitches for many issues that have come to vote. Pushing a point of view seems to be a universal human quality throughout time. There is a rising concern about how people push, versus share, a point of view and what effect that is having on how we are raising our children.

We ask children to look at all sides objectively and then, after weighing the pros and cons, make a decision that the individual will feel good about supporting. Can we even do that now? The key word here is objectively. People are passionate about what they want and how they believe. What percentage of adults can put aside how we feel long enough to explore all options, then reintroduce our feelings into the equation and make a good decision? Parents and teachers often agree that students need to be able to process decisions considering both emotional and logical rational, but those same adults are increasingly unable to process that way as a social group. How then are we teaching our kids to do the same?

In some classrooms, there are no opportunities for discussion or variation of opinion. Even in some classrooms that allow for discussion, some students may feel intimidated if they don't agree with the teacher or their peers. In some of the most open discussions, there is a sense from children that someone has to win. Educationally, we have taken learning to the level where freedom of expression is squashed by fear of being not with the majority. When a student gets work back, they almost never care about what they need to improve on, they look to the number or score to see if they reached a high enough score to move on to the next level or at least keep adults off their case for another two weeks. Fear of failing is not only inhibiting learning in some students, but is causing society members to make decisions out of fear instead of making informed decisions based on considerations of emotional and logical reasons.

In most any political decision in the last 9 years, there are usually two opposing arguments. Here is where the problem starts. Both camps are based on strong human characteristics and yet there is never a middle ground in our "adult" systems. Therefore, there is a constant fear that if we side with A then we are good/bad. From a child's point of view, the student even sees option D. None Of The Above, until the child learns that even though the option exists, rarely is it ever utilized. The decision process for adults has almost become religious. Either you believe as this camp does or you are in danger of being excommunicated or shunned by peers. All of those pressures, to fall into one camp or the other, are all based on fear of rejection. No matter the outcome, one camp is feeling like a victim.

For our kids, many of whom see adult decisions as right/wrong, good/bad, supporting the country/against the country, we need to look at ways we allow for differences or middle ground and for exploration of systems that may allow for differences to exist more harmoniously. Already our youth face pass/fail, teacher's pet/problem child, fitting in/social outcast issues every day. Do our current practices of working with children help to create the very same fearful behaviors that have been guiding our political and legal systems for years?

The inability to use both camps of reasoning and still "fit in" is creating a society of people that are becoming more and more out of touch with making decisions blend rather than polarize. As a result, our society is becoming more polarized, and our kids are watching, while they listen to us continue to extol the virtues of good decisions, getting along with others, and being accepting of differences.

How do we stop this perpetual cycle of decisions (kids and adults) made out of fear of not belonging or fear of causing someone to loose or someone to gain advantage? Insurance companies are thinking about changing health care based on personal choices we make. Many other aspect of "universal access" to things are going to go away because of the economics of a capitalistic society. The decisions we make individually are going to become more and more relevant as to how we are treated, not by other people, but by the government and businesses and organizations. This individual accountability for our decisions seems so polar opposite to the way social decisions are made (where you either gain with this vote or loose with that vote). I don't have solutions, but this polarization of emotional reasoning and logical reasoning is limiting individuals' rights to make decisions and not be punished for not conforming to either side of an issue. This is how wars begin and how conflicts continue to persist over huge tracts of time. Do we need more than two options? Can we even come up with a middle ground any more after discussion if people fear winning or loosing? Does the limitation on student choice in our education system help promote polarization into adulthood?

Let's Get Kids Excited About Writing! (Part 1)

By Pam Kenney

It's often difficult and frustrating to engage a boy's interest in writing projects. When I taught elementary literature/composition, one writing activity that was a sure winner was creating scripts for wordless books. Yes, I know wordless books are primarily for pre-readers, but the very fact that the story is told without text means the pictures are so detailed it's hard to resist adding words mentally as the action unfolds. Boys and girls alike love being authors, and a wordless book project can provide hours of fun, as well as surprising opportunities for acquiring important reading and writing skills.

Just giving children a few initial guidelines will be enough to get them off and running. One book I often start with is Frog Where Are You? by Mercer Mayer. In pictures only, it tells the story of a boy's adventures after his pet frog escapes from its glass jar home. I divide the students into groups of two or three and, after they have "read" the book, they start writing a script for the story. As they write, although they're having a grand time, they're learning about the beginning, middle, and end of a story, when to use sequence words, how to use and punctuate dialogue, how vivid word choice can enhance a story's enjoyment... I could go on and on.

Once the script is in its final form, it's time for the fun part. The kids love to add homemade sound effects to their story, including a ringing bell to signal when a page needs to be turned. I've had students spend hours experimenting with legos falling into in tin pan to simulate breaking glass, blowing through cardboard paper towel tubes to create winds sounds, clucking like chickens or barking like dogs, and having the times of their lives.

When all the parts of the wordless book story are in place, the next step is to record it. When I was a teacher, I used a tape recorder. Now, however, there are incredible resources on your computer that will fascinate any child: VoiceThread; Audacity; GarageBand (for Mac users); even iMovie (Mac users). I love Audacity because it's free, open source, and has all the bells and whistles you could want during a recording session. VoiceThread is great, too, because it allows you to invite your friends and relatives to listen to your children's creations. Stories can be recorded, also, to entertain preschool children.

When it's time to record, children working in groups usually choose one member to read the script, one to ring the bell when it's time to turn the page, and the third to make the sound effects at the appropriate time. Children working alone can do all three with a little practice!

Writing is laborious for a lot of children, but introducing them to wordless books is one way to make learning fun.

Some wordless book suggestions:

The Midnight Circus by Peter Collington
Tuesday by David Wiesner (a Caldecott Award winner)
The Grey Lady and the Strawberry Snatcher by Molly Bang
Will's Mammoth by Stephen Gammell
Good Dog, Carl books by Alexandra Day
Sunshine by Jan Ormerod
Frog Where Are You? and sequels by Mercer Mayer

Still more on wordless books at LIM Resources

sharon's share: Google Fusion Tables

by Sharon Betts

sharon's share: Google Fusion Tables

Evolving Involvement

By Pam Kenney

Every fall parents of upper elementary and middle school students struggle to define the role they should assume in the home/school academic partnership. How much homework support should they provide their children? How should the responsibility for their youngsters’ learning and academic success be apportioned among teachers, parents, and children?

There are educational theories to support a variety of answers to those questions, but my response is predicated on one strongly held belief: Parents turn over too much of the responsibility for academic achievement to the school and assume their children will excel with minimal parental input. As students move through the elementary grades, parents typically ease up on their involvement in homework every year. In fact, as a child’s homework load increases from the fourth grade through middle school, his parents need to be more vigilant about monitoring and supporting his at-home study time than they were when he was younger.

When students are in kindergarten through the third grade, the focus of the curriculum is reading, writing, and math, and homework is usually straightforward. For example, parents are asked to provide a quiet study area, listen to their youngsters read, quiz them on math facts and spelling words, and ensure that completed work and library books are in their backpacks. By fourth grade, the academic curriculum has expanded. Most children are fluent readers; formal reading instruction begins to account for less teaching time, and more emphasis is placed on reading in the content areas (social studies and science). Math teaching zeros in on problem solving in addition to computation. Pupils are asked to study for comprehensive tests and to complete long-term projects at home. In addition, classroom teachers are focusing on building organizational and study skills and helping students internalize the habits of responsibility and diligence started in the lower grades. It is at this point that parents must step up, not scale down, their participation in their child’s academic life.

The task of completing homework assignments in the fourth through the eighth grades is often more time-consuming and difficult for the majority of children than in the earlier grades. Parents become increasingly less sure how to help or how much to help. In general, 9- to 14-year-olds need a lot of homework support from their parents. A common school policy on parental help is that teachers want their students to complete homework that is assigned primarily to reinforce a skill (a math worksheet, e.g.) on their own. Requesting that you not help your child with this kind of homework, however, does not mean a hands-off approach. Most teachers do want you to check his math and reading homework, for example, and have him correct wrong answers. If it is apparent he hasn’t grasped a concept, it’s usually better to send his teacher a note than to attempt to teach him what he doesn’t understand. In math, particularly, children are taught methods to solve problems that are different from how their parents were taught, and parent/child conflicts over the “right way” often produce angry outbursts and tears of frustration.

Most parents are familiar and comfortable with giving their children the help described above. The role of parents is somewhat different, however, when dealing with science and social studies homework, and many falter when children bring home assignments in these subjects. Here are some suggestions on how you can, and should, support your student as homework becomes less straightforward. The teacher may work with her class on a unit about ecosystems, for example. Although perhaps 50 minutes a day are spent on the material in school, additional at-home reinforcement is necessary to ensure mastery. Your child needs to devote time after school hours re-reading lessons, answering study questions, preparing for quizzes and tests, and working on projects. It is an unusual child who is able or willing to do those things on his own without being taught how. With guidance from the school, it is the parents’ responsibility to tell their children what is expected of them at home and to provide the support they require to carry out those expectations.

It goes without saying that parents can’t have appropriate expectations unless they know not only what their child is studying in school, but what organizational skills and study procedures are in place there, too. What is paramount to your child’s academic success, then, is your willingness to become informed about what and how she is studying in school and what her homework assignments are. It means becoming familiar with her assignment book, finding out when tests are scheduled, and working with her to make an at-home study schedule for tests and projects. It means checking not only that she has completed daily homework assignments, but that she understands what she’s doing and, if she doesn’t, writing or emailing her teacher to tell her so. It means requiring that she re-read that day’s science assignment in case there’s quiz even though she tells you she read it in school and already knows the material.

Above all, the prevailing atmosphere in your home must be that homework is a family priority. You must be willing to sit with your fourth through eighth grader and talk about what needs to be done and how to go about doing it. For many families that means reducing the number of after-school activities their children participate in. It may mean that some of your evenings will not be spent on activities you enjoy. Today, upper elementary and middle school subjects are not easy in public or independent schools. Your child will not be successful if he doesn’t work diligently in school and at home every day of the school week. He will not be successful if you expect schools to provide from 8:30 to 3:00 everything he needs to progress academically. They can’t do it. You must be an active participant; it’s one of your most important jobs as a parent.

Working with children at home can be trying for many parents. Children who aren’t used to having their homework supervised will initially balk at parental interference. They don’t want their parents involved, of course, because they know their days of a cursory reading of assignments and the slapdash completion of a math sheet are about to end. It takes effort to do your homework well, and exerting that effort is the last thing a lot of students want to do. However, if you are calm, matter-of-fact, and consistent in your insistence on solid effort at home, your children will slowly but surely realize that the conscientious completion of homework actually makes studying less arduous in the long run. For example, re-reading content area assignments nightly makes studying for tests relatively easy.

To parents who are worried about their children’s grades, I say this: During one nine-week grading period, become more involved with your child’s school experience. Work with him on his homework; help him set up a study schedule and a quiet place to work; quiz him for tests; talk to him about what he’s learning in science and social studies. At first he’ll probably fight you every step of the way, but keep telling yourself that you’re the parent, and you’re in charge. I guarantee the effort you and your child expend now to establish good study habits at home will pay off. His grades will go up, which will enhance his confidence and self-esteem. Someone once said nothing succeeds like success. And my experience with children tells me that when they start to do well in school, they are so buoyed by their success that studying becomes more enjoyable and less of a chore. Diligence can become a habit, and if our children are going to do well in high school and college when their parents’ influence inevitably weakens, it’s a habit parents must instill in them now.

PLC South Session 2: Using the Macbook

Tuesday, October 27, 2:45, Hartford-Sumner Elementary School
Agenda

Dirigo High School Tech Helpers

In some schools in Maine, students take an active part in helping to solve tech issues and in promoting technology integration. Dirigo High in RSU#10, with a program under the guidance of Mike Nolette, is one of those places. See just some of what these engaged and enthusiastic students do here and here.

Know of any others?

AUP for Teaching

SEE MORE

Telstar 3 Session: Blogs and Other Stuff

Crescent Park School, 3:30 - 7:30, Monday, October 26, 2009
Agenda

Ira Glass on Storytelling

Thank you, Ernie Easter, for the lead on this series.

This American Life

Part #2

Part #3

Part #4

Maine Mom Blogs

List of Bloggers

Acceptable Use Policy for teaching with laptops

by Mike Muir

Recently there's been an interesting discussion on the ACTEM listserv (technology using educators) about what the consequences should be for students who violate the school's AUP.

Thinking about the early years of MLTI where we found that schools that had teachers using the laptops in engaging ways with students had lower breakage & theft rates, I got thinking about acceptable use policies for teachers and posted this:

I wish, too, that we had an Acceptable Use Policy for Educators - not for how they use it personally, but how they use it with their students.

I wish that AUP would focus on things like teachers promising that they would use the laptops to

• do projects
• promote curiosity and make content interesting
• build constructive conversations and debate
• open the world to students, taking them where they've never been before
• bring experts into the classroom, regardless of where they are geographically
• improving writing by finding what kids would love to write about
• make complex ideas concrete and understandable
• teach responsibility by giving students responsibility and finding out their questions & concerns about their world & work

And I wish that AUP would prohibit (or at least severely limit)

• not using the laptops
• locked down machines
• strong filtering
• electronic worksheets
• simply looking up facts on the Internet (or worse - calling that a WebQuest)
• using laptops as a textbook
• drills for learning software programs

And I wish that AUP generated as much conversation about consequences of violating the AUP as the one for kids does.

So, what do you think should be in that AUP? (or it might be interesting to see what we believe the consequences for violating that AUP should be!)

What Do We Really Need?

Living Simply

Consumerism

Pie in the Face: Shaving Cream or Whip Cream?

Featuring Theodore Sizer

"Respect for students starts with respect for teachers, for them as individuals, for their work, and for their workplace." ~ Ted Sizer

"The best we educational planners can do is to create the conditions for teachers and students to flourish and get out of their way." ~ Ted Sizer

The Educational Theory of Theodore Sizer

Habits of Mind

Coalition for Essential Schools

Wikipedia; Coalition for Essential Schools

Searching for Photos

Photos at LIM Resources

"Introduction to Self-Education"

“Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” - Isaac Asimov